Lessons not learned

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

As the nation contemplates how the horrors of Sept. 11 could have happened, one lapse is likely to nag in people's minds. After previous terrorist incidents, key security measures that might have prevented them were contemplated but never implemented.

It's not a case of malfeasance or criminal intent. Rather, the culprit is the insidious complacency that gradually eclipses shock, as life crawls back to normal even after something as horrific as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

In that bombing, the explosive used was ammonium nitrate, a chemical with a lethal split personality. It is used by farmers as a fertilizer and by other industries as a powerful and cheap explosive comparable to dynamite. Timothy McVeigh filled a truck with two tons of ammonium nitrate and with a few simple manipulations--he and Terry Nichols were no rocket scientists--made a bomb that killed 168.

Following the bombing there was a flurry of attention around ammonium nitrate, of how it could be regulated, modified so it wouldn't blow up or "tagged" so at least authorities could trace the manufacturer, and presumably the purchaser, after the next terrorist bombing. The National Research Council appointed a blue-ribbon panel of scientists to ponder these questions, and they produced a report in 1998.

And that's about it. According to an Oct. 3 report in The Wall Street Journal, in many parts of the country, ammonium nitrate is easier to purchase than beer--at least there is a minimum-age requirement on beer.

The newspaper reported that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is supposed to regulate explosives, set up a toll-free hotline to answer questions about ammonium nitrate, even though it doesn't officially list the chemical as an explosive. Only a handful of calls have come in. Some fertilizer stores stopped carrying it in 50-lb. bags that could be hauled away by non-farmers. And the store that unwittingly sold McVeigh some of the fertilizer for the Oklahoma bombing has stopped selling it altogether.

The federal panel noted that compared to some countries, the U.S. has relatively lax controls on the purchase of explosives. It also found that tagging ammonium nitrate would double its price and that controlling the very common chemicals used to make it would not be feasible.

Short of that, however, the panel suggested the licensing of buyers and users of the stuff to lessen the chance it might fall on terrorist hands and to help authorities track down illegal use.

Ammonium nitrate had nothing directly to do with the Sept. 11 attacks and no amount of licensing can ever guarantee that it will not be used by a latter-day McVeigh in another terrorist attack.

But the fact that six years after Oklahoma City this chemical is still so unregulated and readily available is disturbing. It points to both bureaucratic inertia and public amnesia.

The country cannot afford to let the same kind of lassitude settle in again. The horror of Sept. 11--and the urgency to implement substantial security measures to avoid a repeat--must remain fresh in the minds of legislators and the public.

And while government investigators are at it, it would be a good idea to review--and revive--the efforts to regulate ammonium nitrate.